Delhi 2 Dublin on Tour
These high-energy, joyful dance music players owe their existence to a fluke in booking at a Vancouver, BC, music festival. Back in 2006, a Canadian DJ was tasked with finding electronic Celtic music acts for Vancouver's Celtic Music Festival. He couldn't find any that he liked — so he created his own. He contacted a few luminaries from the city's Asian Underground scene (think bhangra with an electronic/hip-hop edge) and threw them onstage with a noted Celtic fiddler and some Irish dancers. Much to everyone's surprise, this ad hoc, one-off group went on stage and killed it, and Delhi 2 Dublin was born.
The group decided to keep at it, generating buzz (and experience) by playing small venues and house parties in Canada after that surprising night. They realized they had something real, however, when they were invited to open the Canada Day celebrations in 2007 before an audience of 150,000. Their self-titled debut album was released later that year, and it reached No. 3 on Canada's world music charts. It found an even longer life on iTunes, where it reportedly stayed in the Top 100 world albums for nearly a decade.
At the heart of their appeal is their raucous live shows, but what keeps people coming back are the surprises: South Asian dance numbers embroidered with the plaintive longing of Celtic fiddle, underpinned by basslines first birthed in Jamaica. Delhi 2 Dublin appeared at Burning Man in 2016, and later toured India for the first time that year (a kind of homecoming for a group that draws so much inspiration from the subcontinent).
Over the years, the group's membership has evolved, solidifying around core members Tarun Nayar (tabla, electronics), Sanjay Seran (vocals) and Ravi Binning (dhol, dholak). The band has cleaned up at various Canadian music awards shows: they won the 2010 Inaugural Galaxie Supernova Award at 2010 Ottawa Folk Festival, and were named 2014 Electronic/Dance Artist of the Year at the Western Canadian Music Awards.
